Degeneration (26 page)

             
“He… He’s my brother…” Richard stammered, stepping towards Terry.

             
“Yeah, well, I have family, too,” Terry interrupted. “And until we can figure out just what in the hell is going on, I don’t think we should go anywhere. We’re injured, unarmed, and untrained. Your plan is–”

             
“Fuck you,” Richard spat, glaring at Terry.

             
Terry scoffed.

             
“Well fuck you, too, you crazy son of a bitch,” Terry shot back. “You can go out there and get killed for all you want, but I’m staying here until help arrives.”

             
“You’re a fucking coward,” Richard said. “He’s my brother.”

             
“Yeah, well, fuck him too,” Terry said before erupting into a chain of coughs. He sat on his gurney and glared defiantly at Richard.

Richard tried to speak, but his mind clouded as his anger overpowered him. The IV pole grew heavy in his clinched hands and brought his thoughts back into focus.

He looked at the IV pole with confusion. The pole was coated with clumps of hair, flesh, and blood.

His eyes trailed down in horror at Terry’s corpse. It was slumped against the wall and its head was beaten to an unrecognizable pulp.

             
Richard dropped the IV pole at his feet and stepped back, mouth agape.

The laughter from the hallway escalated.

             
“No…” Richard whispered to himself. “Fuck!”

             
My, my! You did it again! It serves that little shit right!

             
“
No!
I didn’t do this– I didn’t do this! I’m no killer!”

             
Well, he sure didn’t bash his own skull in.

             
“
YOU DID IT!
I didn’t do it!”

             
Andy tittered.

             
Who are you trying to kid? We both know what you are.

             
Richard stared at Terry’s accusing corpse and felt his stomach churn.

             
“Just… just stop talking!” Richard shouted.

             
Well then hurry too Butner and get my body out of that prison! Without my body, I am trapped in here.

             
“
I told you I will
!
” Richard hissed as he picked up the bloody IV pole and stepped out into the hallway. “Just don’t make me hurt anybody else, Andy, please!”

             
Then hurry up and rescue me.

The hallway was quiet with the exception of the woman’s laughter echoing down from the far end.
Bloody splotches peppered the walls
. Infected banged against the door of their barricaded rooms
.
By the time the staff started to barricade rooms, it was too late
; for every door that was b
arricaded, three more were wide-
open.

Two gunshots echoed from down the hall and made Richard flinch.

At the far end of the hall, a lanky woman in blood-stained scrubs walked out of one of the open patient rooms. Her face was flush, splattered with droplets of blood, and glistened with fever sweat. In her hand she held a pistol, barrel smoking. She turned and looked at Richard, grinning in her feverish delirium.

Richard froze and anticipated the nurse to run after him. He gripped the IV pole defensively in front of him.

The nurse simply stared at him vacantly.

“Help… please,” Richard uttered faintly.

“I’ll be there in a minute to treat you,” the woman slurred. “You’ll have to wait your turn. I’m doing my rounds. There are so many sick people on this floor… so many sick people…”

Maniacal laughter echoed from the open room across from her.

She turned towards the room and lurched inside, coughing steadily. She shut the door behind her and locked it.

“Wait… Miss! MISS!” Richard screamed. He sprinted down the hall, gripping the IV pole tightly.

             
Suddenly, an elderly man
wearing a patient gown
stumbled out of one of the open rooms a few feet in front of
him
.

Richard
stopped, gasped, and
gripped the pole tightly.

The
elderly man turned his head towards Richard, shrieked loudly, and charged towards
him
.

Richard drove the IV
pole through the man’s chest. T
he tip of the pole
pierced through the man’s back and splattered
the
drywall behind him
with coagulated blood
.

Richard rammed the pole into the wall
, impaling
the man against the sheetrock.

             
The
elderly man
continued to snarl and swipe
at Richard with his bloodied hands
, s
eemingly unmindful of the sixty-
inch rod
rammed through
the cen
ter of his chest.

Richard slid the pole out of the snarling corpse and quickly drove its blood-streaked tip
through the man’s
right eye.

The end of the pole erupted out the back of the old man’s head
and sprayed the
ceiling tiles
with blood, hair,
and bits of grey matter.

Richard pulled the pole out of the man’s eye, hardly cringing.

The old man sunk down against the wall and sprawled out on the floor at Richard’s feet.

Just like old times, isn’t it, Richie? It’s easy for you… but then again, you’ve had a lot of practice.

“Shut up, Andy! Just…” Richard backed away, turned, and ran towards the door the nurse entered.

             
The
plaque
on the door labeled the room as the recovery ward. Below the
plaque
a piece of paper adorned with the CDC logo read in permanent marker: Symptom-free Patient Holding Area.

             
There was a gunshot inside the room.

             
Richard tried to turn the knob, but the door was locked. He bashed against it repeatedly with his shoulder until the lock gave and the door flung open.

             
Multiple gurneys were lined-up on both sides of the room and each had a patient handcuffed to the arm rails. Most of the patients had already succumbed to the virus and were thrashing around violently in their gurneys, snarling. Some, however, hadn’t turned and simply lay in their beds, looking confused and disoriented. The ones who hadn’t turned were soaked with sweat and their skin flush with fever. A man in one of the center gurneys was laughing uncontrollably while two others rambled to the ceiling in their feverish delirium.

             
The nurse holding the pistol swayed along the aisle between the two rows of gurneys. The handcuffed infected thrashed violently as she walked past and tried to lunge towards her.

             
“Nurse?” Richard asked from the doorway.

             
She ignored him and kept swaggering down the aisle. She stopped in front of a young man who hadn’t turned yet. He was soaked with cold sweat. He erupted in a chain of rattling coughs and weakly turned his head towards her, confused–

             
She casually pointed the pistol at the man and pulled the trigger.

Richard flinched.

             
The laughing man in the center gurney burst out in a peal of hysterics.

             
The nurse doubled-over in a coughing fit and then swayed down the aisle, ignoring the thrashing handcuffed patients who had already turned.

             
“Carol…? Did you find Jake? I can’t find Jake,”
one of the cuffed patients murmured, full of fever, teetering on the edge of consciousness.

             
The nurse stopped, pointed the pistol at the man, and fired.

Richard flinched again.

             
She walked leisurely to the laughing man’s gurney and pointed the pistol between the man’s eyes.

             
The man stared cross-eyed down the gun barrel and burst out laughing, his face soaked by fever sweat.

             
She pulled the trigger and blew the man’s brains all over his pillow.

The nurse lowered her weapon and twitched.

             
“Marissa? What was that? Is that you, baby?”
a man muttered from the back.
“I hurt… I hurt all over–baby–I–”

             
“What… what in the hell are you doing?” Richard asked, clutching the IV pole.

The shackled infected thrashed violently in their beds at the sound of his voice.

             
“I thought… I told you… to wait in your room. I am doing my rounds,” the nurse said. She turned towards Richard and smirked. Her forehead was moist with sweat and blood dribbled out of both nostrils. She half-heartedly aimed the pistol at Richard and fired, swaying.

             
The round flew high and whistled over his head.

Richard ran back out into the hall and slammed the broken door shut behind him just as she fired again. The round splintered through the wooden door and narrowly missed his left thigh.

             
He ran towards the
elevator at the end of the hall.

             
The wooden door flung open behind him and the nurse hobbled after him, laughing in-between wet-sounding coughs. She pointed the pistol at his back.

             
A bloodied woman wearing a hospital gown flew out of one of the open patient rooms, screaming. She leapt at the nurse.

The nurse’s pistol skittered across the ground as the infected patient tackled her down to the ground and tore into her neck with her teeth. Blood shot out of the nurse’s torn jugular in spurts.

Richard reached the elevator and mashed the down
button
r
epeatedly with a trembling hand, but nothing happened.

He panicked and turned towards the stairwell door. A bloody palm-smear ran down the center of the door.

Down the hall, the female patient rose back to her feet, soaked with fresh blood.

The nurse slowly stood up behind her, eyes clouded, gaping neck wound glistening.

Both women stared at Richard for a brief second and bolted down the hall towards him.

He swung open the stairwell door and the stench of smoke and defecation struck him immediately. Just as the two infected women neared the door, he slammed it shut in their face and slid the IV pole in-between the door lever and the doorframe to prevent the door from opening.

The pounding against the door was ferocious.

Richard slowly backed away from the door, breathing heavy. Slowly, he turned towards the stairs.

The lighting situation in
side the stairwell was dismal. E
mer
gency lights were mounted on
each
floor landing and barely lit the dark stairwell
.

A few floors above him
, frantic footsteps suddenly started descending the metallic stairs in an awkward
gait
.

             
Richard ran
down the first flight of stairs.

T
he perusing footsteps
above him
de
scended faster, closing in fast.

Richard’s chest burned
as he descended flight after flight.

Below
, multiple footst
eps started ascending the staircase just as quickly as the footsteps descended from above. He was getting cornered.

Richard stopped on the fifth floor landing and ran to the stairwell door. A paper sign stapled on the door read:

Symptomatic Isolation Floor

Use
Extreme Caution. Firearms Must Be Carried A
t All Times.
Non-armed Staff Must Be Escorted!

Richard opened the door and was immediately inundated by black smoke. The s
moke hung thick in the room and fire alarm
s
chirped
loudly. Overhead, only a few flickering
fluorescent
lights
remained lit
. A circular desk dominated the center of the room and
was surrounded by
rows of bolted-
down chairs
. Corpses were stacked like cordwood u
nder
neath red bio-hazard tarps and
lay
strewn between the rows of chairs. A man was huddled in the corner of the room, moaning in pain.